Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §4.2
Friedrich Strauss (1808-74), whose Life of Jesus 16 effectively destroyed his academic
career. 17
In both cases the hermeneutical assumptions produced a twofold criterion
for analysing the historical value of the Gospels: contradiction and consistency.
18 Where texts seemed to contradict other texts 19 or were inconsistent with
the universal laws which were now known to govern the course of events, the accounts
in these texts should be judged unhistorical on scientific grounds. Here
scientific criticism in effect was posed from the outset as a contradiction to the
traditional claims of faith, a contradiction still seen as such by most scientifically
educated people today.
Reimarus worked with a second criterion, that of necessity: an alleged revelation
must contain knowledge not attainable by natural reason and be necessary
to explain the evidence; that is, the evidence should not be explicable from
natural causes. 20 In fact, however, he maintained, cases of alleged revelation
were full of contradictions. Thus he was the first systematically to drive a wedge
between Jesus and his disciples: in particular, the death of Jesus as a suffering
saviour for all mankind contradicts the intention of Jesus and should be regarded
as an invention subsequently by his disciples. 21 Jesus' own intention had actually
been to 'awaken the Jews to the hope of a worldly Messiah' and a speedy deliverance;
and his death marked the failure of that hope. 22 Reimarus' analysis of the
contradictions in the various NT accounts of Jesus' resurrection has rarely been
equalled by later sceptical criticism. 23 As for the alleged miracles on which
16. D. F. Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835-36, 4 1840; ET by George
Eliot, 1846, 2 1892; reprinted with Introduction by P. C. Hodgson, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972/
London: SCM, 1973). Eliot's biographer notes that 'few books of the nineteenth century have
had a profounder influence on religious thought in England' (G. Haight, George Eliot: A Biography
[New York: Oxford University, 1968J 59).
17. Schweitzer, Quest ch. 7 ; see also H. Harris, David Friedrich Strauss and His Theology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1973); J. C. O'Neill, The Bible's Authority: A Portrait
Gallery of Thinkers from Lessing to Bultmann (Edinburgh: Clark, 1991) 108-16; Baird, History
246-58; and the Introductions by Hodgson to Strauss's Life and by L. E. Keck to D. F. Strauss,
The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History (1865; ET Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).
18. Talbert, Reimarus 13, 25-26; Strauss, Life 88-89.
19. Here Reimarus was in effect using the 'plain meaning' of the text as a weapon
against Protestant orthodoxy.
20. Talbert, Reimarus 13-15. Here anticipated by the Deist John Tolland (Talbert,
Reimarus 16-17).
21. Talbert, Reimarus, e.g., 129, 134, 151. Here anticipated particularly by Chubb (extract
in Kiimmel, New Testament 55-56).
22. Talbert, Reimarus 135-50.
23. Talbert, Reimarus 153-200, here anticipated particularly by the Deist Peter Annet
(Baird, History 49-50).
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